The year had finally ended! Woohoo :)
My presentation speech
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tu4GXXSCEXMDBkZTZiMWItMmMwZS00ZGEyLWFmMGYtNjZmNDM1ZDllYzVi
My reference list
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tu4GXXSCEXMTdlMDVhM2ItZWI1ZS00NzE0LWExMDctMTQxOTRlM2I4ZjY3
My powerpoint
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B6tu4GXXSCEXNTNlYmM4MDMtNmU1ZS00OWZmLTkyM2UtYTAyMGM2OGViNTRm
Wednesday 28th September - Tuesday 25th October
We started the project UN-REAL on Wednesday. To get our brief we had to flow the clues in a treasure hunt. The last clue didn't work so well because it was held by another student who hid to well, and we were unable to find him.
New Zealand was a top secret experiment initiated by said people to see if the topside was livable. In our journey, this is all discovered by a guy called J. Crawford. The player was initiated into our alternate reality by a crazy looking man who shoved a piece of paper into the players hand, babbled something about being enlightened and was chased off by two men. The piece of paper was covered in mad scribbles but it also held a website for a video blog which the player went to. This video blog explained who the crazy looking man was - J. Crawford - and the situation. He also talked about seeing a wanted sign of himself that was the next stage in our journey. On the Wanted poster was a reward and a OR code.
The QR code lead to a newspaper website with a video article showing some CCTV footage of Crawford bomb diving some bushes.
When the player went to said bushes they found a USB stick, on which there were mostly corrupted files.The only file that wasn't corrupted was a medical file for Crawford from an insane asylum. On this there were instruction to either go to the CEO of the Asylum with the USB were you would get a reward for bringing in information on him, or go to Crawford himself. If the player went to Crawford location they would see signs of a struggle and an ID tag that lead to another room. In that room you would see Crawford struggling with the two men who chased him off earlier. One would ask for te USB and when you handed it over Crawford would break free and you would escape.
The main problem we had were with the quality of the artifacts, which looked amateurish and last minute due to print outs being black and white, the news article being shaky, and lacking volume, and the actions could have done with some rehearsal.
The other problem was that the player had half an hour to finish the journey that they didn't get to take in all the detail we had on our alternate reality. This also cause the moral choice between choosing the reward, or helping Crawford got lost. This also caused the fight at Crawford location to be over looked, this and the fact that the player came through a different door meant the the actors where blindsided and unsure of what to do. This wasn't helped by the player wasn't sure what was going on.
The brief was to create an alternate universe and introduce the players to it through a treasure hunt. We had to use two virtual and two physical items.
My group got hooked on the butterfly affect. We wanted to take something that had happened in the past and change it so the future, the world we live in today was different.
First we decided to have Nixon killed while he was visiting Mao causing a nuclear war. In today's time most of the world would have been a wasteland. New Zealand ( blogger doesn't believe Zealand is a word x_x) would have been a superpower because we were far away and had the resources to be self sufficient.
We modeled our journey around doing a USB drop, where a USB is left somewhere and the players have to find it and plug it in. Because we wanted to use this at one stage of our journey we decided to make the rest of the journey about why it had been hidden, what was on it and why you had to find it. We ended up with the USB having the cure for radiation sickness on it, the cure having been discovered by a government scientist. The player was brought into this world by the government group the scientist worked for because the guy had gone missing. As the player followed the clues they would have found that the scientist had been kidnapped by terrorist.
When the player was brought into the world they would be told their two targets. Save the scientist and find the cure to keep it our of terrorist hands. When the USB is discovered the player realizes that they can only follow one. It was a moral choice of either saving the scientist or saving millions by giving the cure to the government.
We then talked to our tutor Maggie who talked about the game being immersive. Instead of making a world and placing the player in it, effectively telling them that 'this' is the world as we know it even though if they looked outside they would see it isn't, we decided to keep it a secret.
We changed it so that it was the Cuban Missile crisis that had started the nuclear war.We then made it so that people had gone underground to escape the radiation.
First we decided to have Nixon killed while he was visiting Mao causing a nuclear war. In today's time most of the world would have been a wasteland. New Zealand ( blogger doesn't believe Zealand is a word x_x) would have been a superpower because we were far away and had the resources to be self sufficient.
We modeled our journey around doing a USB drop, where a USB is left somewhere and the players have to find it and plug it in. Because we wanted to use this at one stage of our journey we decided to make the rest of the journey about why it had been hidden, what was on it and why you had to find it. We ended up with the USB having the cure for radiation sickness on it, the cure having been discovered by a government scientist. The player was brought into this world by the government group the scientist worked for because the guy had gone missing. As the player followed the clues they would have found that the scientist had been kidnapped by terrorist.
When the player was brought into the world they would be told their two targets. Save the scientist and find the cure to keep it our of terrorist hands. When the USB is discovered the player realizes that they can only follow one. It was a moral choice of either saving the scientist or saving millions by giving the cure to the government.
We then talked to our tutor Maggie who talked about the game being immersive. Instead of making a world and placing the player in it, effectively telling them that 'this' is the world as we know it even though if they looked outside they would see it isn't, we decided to keep it a secret.
We changed it so that it was the Cuban Missile crisis that had started the nuclear war.We then made it so that people had gone underground to escape the radiation.
New Zealand was a top secret experiment initiated by said people to see if the topside was livable. In our journey, this is all discovered by a guy called J. Crawford. The player was initiated into our alternate reality by a crazy looking man who shoved a piece of paper into the players hand, babbled something about being enlightened and was chased off by two men. The piece of paper was covered in mad scribbles but it also held a website for a video blog which the player went to. This video blog explained who the crazy looking man was - J. Crawford - and the situation. He also talked about seeing a wanted sign of himself that was the next stage in our journey. On the Wanted poster was a reward and a OR code.The QR code lead to a newspaper website with a video article showing some CCTV footage of Crawford bomb diving some bushes.
When the player went to said bushes they found a USB stick, on which there were mostly corrupted files.The only file that wasn't corrupted was a medical file for Crawford from an insane asylum. On this there were instruction to either go to the CEO of the Asylum with the USB were you would get a reward for bringing in information on him, or go to Crawford himself. If the player went to Crawford location they would see signs of a struggle and an ID tag that lead to another room. In that room you would see Crawford struggling with the two men who chased him off earlier. One would ask for te USB and when you handed it over Crawford would break free and you would escape.The main problem we had were with the quality of the artifacts, which looked amateurish and last minute due to print outs being black and white, the news article being shaky, and lacking volume, and the actions could have done with some rehearsal.
The other problem was that the player had half an hour to finish the journey that they didn't get to take in all the detail we had on our alternate reality. This also cause the moral choice between choosing the reward, or helping Crawford got lost. This also caused the fight at Crawford location to be over looked, this and the fact that the player came through a different door meant the the actors where blindsided and unsure of what to do. This wasn't helped by the player wasn't sure what was going on.
Friday 26th August - Tuesday 27th September
On Friday the 26th of August we got our brief for the next project. Basically, it was to make a CD case for a CD with the sounds on it that we made in our last project. To start I doodled ideas, things that related to the sounds I had to use and the idea behind them. I also drew several doodles of how to open the packaging to get to the CD inside.
From these doodle I drew seven concepts. The idea I chose to develop was linked to movement. It was a pocket, the front which was folded like a paper fan and had the graphics of a stick figure doing a cartwheel. on different flaps. As I developed this idea it went from a pocket, to a box to a sliding case. The graphics also changed, incorporating the sounds themselves into the design. As the sounds where quick, squeaky, little beeps, they reminded me of old school games. The graphics on the packaging developed from a stick man doing a cartwheel into pacman, then into pacman chasing after the little dots.
My final design had two pieces of a half circle. One was smaller and could sit in the other piece. The CD would be inside the smaller piece and to close it the smaller piece would slide out and both pieces would form a whole circle. At this stage it was a flat disk.At first I was going to use a 3D printer to create me package. I designed the pieces on SolidWorks and sent them off to Olaf Diegal to get a price, and ask some other questions had thought of involving the 3D printer. But if anyone had told me he was not in the country for three weeks I'd forgotten. When he did get back to me he said to contact Andrew Whithell. So I did, basically the same email but changes addressing it to Andrew and not Olaf. The next email I got from him was asking if i was an AUT student. I was and I told him but this delay got me thinking. Was there another way I could make this? 3D printing seemed like taking the easy way, something I had been accused of doing before. So I decided to hand make my cases. I knew that pac-man had come out in the 1980's and that was when the first personal computers came out, and packaging went from being cardboard to plastic. I wanted it to have the feel of that time and the people who played pac-man. I decided to use paper mache for my package because it is reminiscent of something you do as children.
To do this I realisized I would need a mold of something to shape it around. As a had no flat circle dick thing I decided to use my giant M&M as a mold. I was bigger than my original design and was a spherical shape A quick look on the internet showed lots of recipes and tips. The recipe I did decide to use involved using one cup cold water, quarter cup flour and five cups boiling water, then stirring the boiling mixture till it cleared.This was an utter failure.
Nothing really happened. It never when clear or thickened. It was like white water. So instead I brought wallpaper paste. This just said to mix with four liters of water and leave for half an hour. Once it was made I used five tinfoil molds of a giant M&M I own to make five pieces. Originally these where going to be the outer pieces and when they dried I would make the other five pieces inside but once I had made them I decided that using them as the lower pieces would be easier. Once again I made five tin foil molds, this time one of each piece and placed paper mache around it.
Tuesday 9th - Friday 19th August
This was our last project with Zoe and it lasted for two weeks instead of one. We were to make an audio instalation or performance and show case in the audio foundation.
At first it was just going to be me and one other guy, Sam, doing his instalation idea. His idea was to have a room, or corridorr that you would enter from one enterance and excit throuhg another and have lots of rope tied across the room. When someone entered the room they wold have to move the rope to get by it would make a sound.
We then had to others join the group as we thought it would be a lot of effort then went to the audio foundation to see where we could set it up. Unfortunately there wasn't really a good place to put his idea and it wasn't going to as epic if we had to scale it down so we started brainstorming other ideas.
The Audio Foundation itself is in the basement of the building so you have to go down a spriral staircase to get there. It had really bad acustics and gave everything an echo which we liked. When you first come into the Audio Foundation the stairs are right across from the door that have a metal rail. On the top floor there is a section of floor that is roped off by the rail that we thought might be cool to use.
THe end idea for that was to use peizos to pick up the vibrations on the rail and have a speaker either at the end of the stairs or at the top that played it back.
During this brainstroming I got to thinking on motion detecters. My very first idea was to use motin detectors change something about the audio we were makeing, e.g. if someone was at the top of the stairs the motion detector would pick them up and change the pitch of the audio playing.
Then I thought off making invisible instuments. You would move your hands like you were playing an instument, say a piano. When your fingers pushed the invisible button a motion detector would pick up the movement and play a note.
I think back to our original idea and thought of using a motion detector instead of ropes. This idea would also have to be a smaller production than that of his original idea becaue of limitations with the motion detector and cameras. This lent the idea to being more a performance than an instalation. I thought we could do a wordless converstaion. Neither of us know sign language so we would talk through gestures and body language that most everyone could understand. I know for myself I am not good with comucating things and am very shy so being able to comunicate without saying anything really is an interesting idea for me. I also thought we could link it back to Sam's idea about the subconcious making of sounds as we do things, such as having an innocent conversation.
It worked well as I did the patch and he made the sounds, and then the cord to plug my laptop into the PA system in the Audio Foundation.
For the patch I got the original motion detector from the internet. I then edited it so it worked on windows Max instead of the Max for Mac. In the original the screan was separated into fifteen different squares. I then divided those squares up as well. At frst I divided them up into fifteen more screens but we decide that was a little extenssive, and would involve getting 225 sounds. We also would have hade a problem with the sounds as they dont't really play well when you had a lot going at the same time, and you probable would hae noticed.
So we ended up with the original fifteen squares divided into quaters and each of thoe playing a different note.
I also had to edit the output of the screens as originaly they detected everything, even if you were sitting in front of it completely still it would still be picking up movement behind you. The output fromt the screen was a series of numbers, to make the motion detector less sensitive I recorded the output when it detected movement close up and made it so that it only worked when it detected that.
I then added in the sounds that my partner had made. And made each sound play through its own play button, which would also not have been possible with 225 sounds. Giving each its own sound button enabled all the sounds to play at once instead of one at a time.
I then put in the option to choose which webcam you wanted it to use for the motion detector and tidied it all up.
At first it was just going to be me and one other guy, Sam, doing his instalation idea. His idea was to have a room, or corridorr that you would enter from one enterance and excit throuhg another and have lots of rope tied across the room. When someone entered the room they wold have to move the rope to get by it would make a sound.
We then had to others join the group as we thought it would be a lot of effort then went to the audio foundation to see where we could set it up. Unfortunately there wasn't really a good place to put his idea and it wasn't going to as epic if we had to scale it down so we started brainstorming other ideas.
The Audio Foundation itself is in the basement of the building so you have to go down a spriral staircase to get there. It had really bad acustics and gave everything an echo which we liked. When you first come into the Audio Foundation the stairs are right across from the door that have a metal rail. On the top floor there is a section of floor that is roped off by the rail that we thought might be cool to use.
THe end idea for that was to use peizos to pick up the vibrations on the rail and have a speaker either at the end of the stairs or at the top that played it back.
During this brainstroming I got to thinking on motion detecters. My very first idea was to use motin detectors change something about the audio we were makeing, e.g. if someone was at the top of the stairs the motion detector would pick them up and change the pitch of the audio playing.
Then I thought off making invisible instuments. You would move your hands like you were playing an instument, say a piano. When your fingers pushed the invisible button a motion detector would pick up the movement and play a note.
I think back to our original idea and thought of using a motion detector instead of ropes. This idea would also have to be a smaller production than that of his original idea becaue of limitations with the motion detector and cameras. This lent the idea to being more a performance than an instalation. I thought we could do a wordless converstaion. Neither of us know sign language so we would talk through gestures and body language that most everyone could understand. I know for myself I am not good with comucating things and am very shy so being able to comunicate without saying anything really is an interesting idea for me. I also thought we could link it back to Sam's idea about the subconcious making of sounds as we do things, such as having an innocent conversation.
It worked well as I did the patch and he made the sounds, and then the cord to plug my laptop into the PA system in the Audio Foundation.
For the patch I got the original motion detector from the internet. I then edited it so it worked on windows Max instead of the Max for Mac. In the original the screan was separated into fifteen different squares. I then divided those squares up as well. At frst I divided them up into fifteen more screens but we decide that was a little extenssive, and would involve getting 225 sounds. We also would have hade a problem with the sounds as they dont't really play well when you had a lot going at the same time, and you probable would hae noticed.
So we ended up with the original fifteen squares divided into quaters and each of thoe playing a different note.
I also had to edit the output of the screens as originaly they detected everything, even if you were sitting in front of it completely still it would still be picking up movement behind you. The output fromt the screen was a series of numbers, to make the motion detector less sensitive I recorded the output when it detected movement close up and made it so that it only worked when it detected that.
I then added in the sounds that my partner had made. And made each sound play through its own play button, which would also not have been possible with 225 sounds. Giving each its own sound button enabled all the sounds to play at once instead of one at a time.
I then put in the option to choose which webcam you wanted it to use for the motion detector and tidied it all up.
Tuesday 1st - Friday 5th August
This week we made instuments. We had Phil Dadson come in and show us a variety of his own instruments that he'd made, then he showed some videos of other people who had also made their own instuments. We were given a group had the week to make our own instuments before giving a performance with them on Friday.
I was inspired by one of the clips where a woman was playing an strument she'd made out of springs and tin cans. I wanted to use springs in mine but wasn't sure how as I found it hard to understand how the instuments worked. After talking with Zoe I decided I would put the springs on a stainless steel bowl. I found this really cool bowl at look sharp, I wsn't sure if it was actually steel or not but it had this really long and kind of wonky resonance.
When I later talked to Phil Dadson, who was doing this weeks project. He wasn't sure how to stick the springs to the bowl and suggested that I use threaded rods instead. I also liked this idea because out of all his instruments I liked his version of this the best. His was two steel bowls stuck togeather with steel rods, both threaded and untheaded bolted on. In the end I used three threaded rods and three springs, I used washers to hold the springs onto the bowl.
If there was anything I would change it would probable be that in a performance I used a peizo, because my largest spring had this long resonating ding when hit but it was quite quiet and you couldn't hear it over the other instruments. I also might have made the others springs wider, because they were almost the same thickness and sounded most smiler.
I was inspired by one of the clips where a woman was playing an strument she'd made out of springs and tin cans. I wanted to use springs in mine but wasn't sure how as I found it hard to understand how the instuments worked. After talking with Zoe I decided I would put the springs on a stainless steel bowl. I found this really cool bowl at look sharp, I wsn't sure if it was actually steel or not but it had this really long and kind of wonky resonance.
When I later talked to Phil Dadson, who was doing this weeks project. He wasn't sure how to stick the springs to the bowl and suggested that I use threaded rods instead. I also liked this idea because out of all his instruments I liked his version of this the best. His was two steel bowls stuck togeather with steel rods, both threaded and untheaded bolted on. In the end I used three threaded rods and three springs, I used washers to hold the springs onto the bowl.
If there was anything I would change it would probable be that in a performance I used a peizo, because my largest spring had this long resonating ding when hit but it was quite quiet and you couldn't hear it over the other instruments. I also might have made the others springs wider, because they were almost the same thickness and sounded most smiler.
Tuesday 25th - Friday 29th July
On tuesday we made piezo's or surface mics. We were each given a small peizo, one crocodile clip and a 6ml? plug. We were told how to do this by Simon Cumming, who led the workshops that week. I went up to surplus tronics to get another crocodile clip and a bigger piezo which came with its own wires. I didn't get around to making it because I didn't feel so good and was home nd in bed by three.
It didn't matter to much as the next day we learnt about circuit bending and were given our groups for this week. I borrowed a piezo from one of the guys in my group and took it home to record some sounds. I also ended up breaking it, as the wires come of the peizo. I ended up giving him mine.
For the circuit breaking I had a toy that sang the abc's. It had a tiny sound bored so I wasn't sure if i weould be able to get something out of it, but I managed to both speed it up and slow it down. We recorded the sound of it going slowly before the toy broke.
In our performance I used a piezo. at first i just kinda rubbed it against the table for background noise to help buld our performance up then held it against the mints to participate in the 'conversation' we were having with our sounds.
It didn't matter to much as the next day we learnt about circuit bending and were given our groups for this week. I borrowed a piezo from one of the guys in my group and took it home to record some sounds. I also ended up breaking it, as the wires come of the peizo. I ended up giving him mine.
For the circuit breaking I had a toy that sang the abc's. It had a tiny sound bored so I wasn't sure if i weould be able to get something out of it, but I managed to both speed it up and slow it down. We recorded the sound of it going slowly before the toy broke.
In our performance I used a piezo. at first i just kinda rubbed it against the table for background noise to help buld our performance up then held it against the mints to participate in the 'conversation' we were having with our sounds.
Thursday 21st -Friday 22nd July
So on Thursady we played arpund with our sounds and made a sound moment. Or was it called a noise moment? I can't remember. Anyway, in my group we all had a seperate little play around with the sounds trying to come up with something. Mine was dumb, so we decided to use Sams as the base, with all of us pitching in and giving a sugestions on how to improve it. I wasn't really much help here, I could decide what sounded good together and what didn't.
On Friday all the groups played there songs? sounds? I have to admit I'm not a good listener. We were sitting in the dark but i still got distracted by my own thoughts. On one hand I thought it was quite cool, sitting in the dark listening to these sounds, it was different and gave you relaxing feelling. On the other hand I was a bit bored and couldn't keep my mind on the music.
On Friday all the groups played there songs? sounds? I have to admit I'm not a good listener. We were sitting in the dark but i still got distracted by my own thoughts. On one hand I thought it was quite cool, sitting in the dark listening to these sounds, it was different and gave you relaxing feelling. On the other hand I was a bit bored and couldn't keep my mind on the music.
Wednesday 20th July
Today we went to the Anechoic Chamber and the Reverberation Chambers. This was what the other half of the class did yesterday. First we had to walk up Wellesly St (D:) which sucked. Then we had a little lectrue by the guy who worked there. Which, in my opionion was quite boring. Some of it was interesting, like hearing how the arcustics worked in different places. And learning that lisening to something 85 dB for four hours would damage your hearing.
After the Lecture we went to see the chambers. The first one was the Reverberation Chamber . This chamber was used to see how materials worked to absorb or relfect noise. It had these thick as metal doors with fancy locks.
The Anechoic Chamber was buzzy. it reminded me of a music video, of the Windows Media Player visualizations. All along the ceilling, floor and walls wer foam wedges pointed outwards in squares. They had this springing metal fence that you syood on abouve the chambers real floor.
Both Chambers where seperate from the building they where in.
It was quite fun looking at these chambers. Both so completely different. One that reflected every soun back at you hundreds of times and one that was as quite as a grave.
After the Lecture we went to see the chambers. The first one was the Reverberation Chamber . This chamber was used to see how materials worked to absorb or relfect noise. It had these thick as metal doors with fancy locks.
The Anechoic Chamber was buzzy. it reminded me of a music video, of the Windows Media Player visualizations. All along the ceilling, floor and walls wer foam wedges pointed outwards in squares. They had this springing metal fence that you syood on abouve the chambers real floor.
Both Chambers where seperate from the building they where in.
It was quite fun looking at these chambers. Both so completely different. One that reflected every soun back at you hundreds of times and one that was as quite as a grave.
Tuesday 19th July
Our first project for the Second Semester has to do with sound. Or more correctly veiwing noises as music. We are doing this project differently to the last ones, as for this one each week we will be doing a mini project to do with noise.
On Tuesday the class was split in two and the half I was in went on a noise walk??? We were given a sheet of paper that had a table on it. One box was to put the name of the noise you herd. Then beside that were boxes where you wrote initials that ment whether is was melodic or not, natural of not etc.
I was really dreading doing this when I realised this was what I was going to do but it wasn't that bad. I was afraid it would be borring but most of the time you were just listening to the sounds around you and trying to identifty whether they had melody or rythem. These were the two that stumped me the most, mostly because I wasn't totally sure what they ment. Melody more than rythem.
The guy who took it (whos name I cannot remember. Gah!) was friendly and nice. it wasn't fun exactly, but it was interesting.
On Tuesday the class was split in two and the half I was in went on a noise walk??? We were given a sheet of paper that had a table on it. One box was to put the name of the noise you herd. Then beside that were boxes where you wrote initials that ment whether is was melodic or not, natural of not etc.
I was really dreading doing this when I realised this was what I was going to do but it wasn't that bad. I was afraid it would be borring but most of the time you were just listening to the sounds around you and trying to identifty whether they had melody or rythem. These were the two that stumped me the most, mostly because I wasn't totally sure what they ment. Melody more than rythem.
The guy who took it (whos name I cannot remember. Gah!) was friendly and nice. it wasn't fun exactly, but it was interesting.
Project Four
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/auxiliary+equipment
http://itsasmallweb.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/mashing-up-daft-punk/
http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2011/05/soundaffects-a-musical-and-visualisation-interpretation-of-nyc/
http://digigen.co.uk/2011/03/17/range-rover-evoque-pulse-of-the-city-campaign-and-film/
http://urbantick.blogspot.com/2010/03/tracks-refreshed-processing.html
So the first thing we did when we got our brief was divvy up the jobs. I ended up being the programmer because I was the only one who had a vague idea of how to program. We then went about brainstorming. We were to come up with a piece of axillary equipment that recorded data and allowed us to see the city in ways we wouldn't be able to otherwise.
My idea was viewing the city the way an animal or insect would. I did three concepts, a spider, a dog and a bird. My group decided to use my Spidercam idea and drew up a sketch. We were going to bisect the image into into eight squares and make the edges black and white and blurry.
I also thought that we might be able to make it turn towards movement it detects in the outer squares but as I was the programmer and I wasn't sure how we'd do that I was hesitant to mention it.
Then talked to Kim and couldn't quite defend our idea so he told us to take pictures of light and colour around the city instead. We decided to keep our original sketch until we talked to Charles and he told us to just to use colour. To make the equipment drive around in a circle, drive forward, then circle again, taking pictures when it circled. We would then take the average colour in the pictures, turn it into a square and put it in another picture.
We got stuck on how to design the equipment. Eventually we settled on a basic design of a box on the car and another box for the camera on top. We had a little trouble with that because our first Deign in CAD was done for aesthetics not practicality. Eventually we got the okay and the fabricators went of to make it while I worked on programming.
I used both Arduino and Max for the programming. Arduino to control the car and a servo that we were going to use to tilt the camera at different angles. Our car was programmed to drive forward, circle, drive forward etc. Then I discovered that the front wheels were actually on another motor not a servo so I hooked that up to the arduino to be able to change the direction and hooked the back wheels up to a battery pack.
Then we decided it went to fast and swapped it around making it so the car only drove in circles and we could control the speed of the car through the arduino board. Then we discovered the servo to change the angle of the camera didn't work and got rid of that.
The MaxPatch ended up taking the average colour from the live feed and exporting images from it onto another screen every so often in lines. I edited the original patch form James to include two cameras and the final image/movie so that every second picture came from the second camera.
http://itsasmallweb.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/mashing-up-daft-punk/
http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2011/05/soundaffects-a-musical-and-visualisation-interpretation-of-nyc/
http://digigen.co.uk/2011/03/17/range-rover-evoque-pulse-of-the-city-campaign-and-film/
http://urbantick.blogspot.com/2010/03/tracks-refreshed-processing.html
So the first thing we did when we got our brief was divvy up the jobs. I ended up being the programmer because I was the only one who had a vague idea of how to program. We then went about brainstorming. We were to come up with a piece of axillary equipment that recorded data and allowed us to see the city in ways we wouldn't be able to otherwise.
My idea was viewing the city the way an animal or insect would. I did three concepts, a spider, a dog and a bird. My group decided to use my Spidercam idea and drew up a sketch. We were going to bisect the image into into eight squares and make the edges black and white and blurry.
I also thought that we might be able to make it turn towards movement it detects in the outer squares but as I was the programmer and I wasn't sure how we'd do that I was hesitant to mention it.
Then talked to Kim and couldn't quite defend our idea so he told us to take pictures of light and colour around the city instead. We decided to keep our original sketch until we talked to Charles and he told us to just to use colour. To make the equipment drive around in a circle, drive forward, then circle again, taking pictures when it circled. We would then take the average colour in the pictures, turn it into a square and put it in another picture.
We got stuck on how to design the equipment. Eventually we settled on a basic design of a box on the car and another box for the camera on top. We had a little trouble with that because our first Deign in CAD was done for aesthetics not practicality. Eventually we got the okay and the fabricators went of to make it while I worked on programming.
I used both Arduino and Max for the programming. Arduino to control the car and a servo that we were going to use to tilt the camera at different angles. Our car was programmed to drive forward, circle, drive forward etc. Then I discovered that the front wheels were actually on another motor not a servo so I hooked that up to the arduino to be able to change the direction and hooked the back wheels up to a battery pack.
Then we decided it went to fast and swapped it around making it so the car only drove in circles and we could control the speed of the car through the arduino board. Then we discovered the servo to change the angle of the camera didn't work and got rid of that.
The MaxPatch ended up taking the average colour from the live feed and exporting images from it onto another screen every so often in lines. I edited the original patch form James to include two cameras and the final image/movie so that every second picture came from the second camera.
Project Four Practice
We had two days of tutorial for SolidWorks, a program we will have to use in project four which officially starts tomorrow. We received the brief yesterday, which was great as it gives me time to think about what I think we could do to fulfil it.
For the tutorial on Wednesday we made a cube, put two identical holes in it, then made pins for the holes and put them in the holes. Sound simple? Its not. CAD's SolidWorks is one of the most confusing, infuriating and difficult programs ever. The delete button doesn't work in it and neither does control Z. It is only for windows so we all had to use the macs in the computer lab because they have both windows and mac.
Today we made a squished tube-like shape and the top half of a question mark, then tried to replicate a tripod design before we were shown how to render our images and how to get them on drawings.
Project Three
http://www.imal.org/NewBraveWorld/NBW2/?p=46
http://inventorspot.com/articles/most_scandalous_geeky_gadget_peripheral_pants_wearable_keyboard_25231
http://www.unwiredview.com/2010/05/31/sony-nextep-wearable-mobile-computer-concept/
For this project we had to make a wearable interface to interact with images/videos that showed the idea behind the our films from the last project.
We had two days of tutorial in Max/MSP/Jitter, the programming software. We also had one lesson in hacking a keyboard that we would use as our wearable interface.
We started this project at the beginning of our holidays and had one week to work on it afterwards.
These are the help patches I got from the Max/MSP forum: By Bas van der Graaff
By Koboo
By MIB
Then trying to get a different movie to play each time the button is pushed, then finding Bas van der Graaff patch's:
Then trying get the counters to sync so when one movie played from the left side then one from the right the right side would skip a movie before getting Koboo's help:
http://inventorspot.com/articles/most_scandalous_geeky_gadget_peripheral_pants_wearable_keyboard_25231
http://www.unwiredview.com/2010/05/31/sony-nextep-wearable-mobile-computer-concept/
For this project we had to make a wearable interface to interact with images/videos that showed the idea behind the our films from the last project.
We had two days of tutorial in Max/MSP/Jitter, the programming software. We also had one lesson in hacking a keyboard that we would use as our wearable interface.
We started this project at the beginning of our holidays and had one week to work on it afterwards.
These are the help patches I got from the Max/MSP forum: By Bas van der Graaff
Then there are my numerous patches trying to figure out how to get what I wanted. First trying to get a key to play a movie:
Then Finding MIB's patch and editing it to play a different movie when it sensed movement in a certain area:
And my final messy patch with both movement detecting and the yes or no patch and an extra chromakey bit:
Project Two
http://www.filmsite.org/crimefilms.html
http://listverse.com/2007/09/18/top-20-best-gangster-movies/
For project two we had to make a short film between 4-6 min. We were given a list of short stories that were to inspire us. My group decided to base our film on the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Our groups for this one were chosen by the genres we'd got the day before, so our film genre was gangster.
We played swapsies with our members for the first two days and ended up in three person group. I got the job of Production Manager, which basically meant I organised everything. The most frustrating thing was the filming schedule. We used actors from outside the course so I had to time our filming schedule around their own schedules.
Our film was to long so a bunch got cut out during the editing that kinda ruined the beginning as it didn't make sense.
...and there is an error which means I cant post it up there.
http://listverse.com/2007/09/18/top-20-best-gangster-movies/
For project two we had to make a short film between 4-6 min. We were given a list of short stories that were to inspire us. My group decided to base our film on the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood. Our groups for this one were chosen by the genres we'd got the day before, so our film genre was gangster.
Our film was to long so a bunch got cut out during the editing that kinda ruined the beginning as it didn't make sense.
...and there is an error which means I cant post it up there.
Editing Practice
Tuesday the 22nd, we did an Editing Practice.
We were given a pile of different clips and music ad told to make a short film. We were shown the basics of final cut and sent off. Taking a quick look through the clips I saw a lot with a water theme and came up with this.
I couldn't decide how to end the film at first and only thought of having the shark swimming away when I went to bed, I stuck it on in the morning. A lot of other people also had shark attacks that were basically identical to mine.
On the Wednesday after we did another editing practice. This time we were to use the film the Wizard of Oz to make another short film to a certain genre. We picked a piece of paper out of a box with a genre on it and I ended up with gangster. My first thought was what exactly was a gangster film? Rappers and people in baggy clothes were what came to mind. After a little research I understood the genre better.
My plot was, four members of one gang (Dorothy, the Tin man, the Cowardly lion and Scarecrow) are asked to steal 'the witches broom' from another gang (the Wicked Witch and her minions) by their leader (the Wizard of Oz). On the way there one of the members is kidnapped by the enemy gang. The rest go and save her while also killing the enemy boss and getting 'the witches broom'. It ends when they take the broom back to their leader.
I would post that but due to copyright reasons I cannot.
We were given a pile of different clips and music ad told to make a short film. We were shown the basics of final cut and sent off. Taking a quick look through the clips I saw a lot with a water theme and came up with this.
On the Wednesday after we did another editing practice. This time we were to use the film the Wizard of Oz to make another short film to a certain genre. We picked a piece of paper out of a box with a genre on it and I ended up with gangster. My first thought was what exactly was a gangster film? Rappers and people in baggy clothes were what came to mind. After a little research I understood the genre better.
My plot was, four members of one gang (Dorothy, the Tin man, the Cowardly lion and Scarecrow) are asked to steal 'the witches broom' from another gang (the Wicked Witch and her minions) by their leader (the Wizard of Oz). On the way there one of the members is kidnapped by the enemy gang. The rest go and save her while also killing the enemy boss and getting 'the witches broom'. It ends when they take the broom back to their leader.
I would post that but due to copyright reasons I cannot.
Project One
And this is the third time I have started this post. GAH!
On the third of March we started Project One. Create an Interactive Drawing Machine out of Lego Nxt. We had two weeks before we had to present our robot to the class on the 18th.
My group made our robot draw circles with a whiteboard marker pen on the ground. We called it the Vandal Bot. It went through many reincarnations after its first construction but nothing lethal. we used the base for the basic Tribot in our robot.
First we were going to have the pen out back and have the colour sensor out front pointing at the ground to catch the change in paper colour when we put different coloured pieces of cellophane across the light source, Unfortunately this didn't work so we decided to use darkness and light.
Our robot would sense when it was light and sit there patiently then when it when dark it would go crazy vandalizing, thrus The Vandal Bot. Then we had to give it a reason and a personality. We decided to make it draw circles as its vandal signature, because that was its eye. Its always watching you, waiting till you least expect it to take revenge for being rebuilt and disassembled all the time.
We also gave it a cape.
On the third of March we started Project One. Create an Interactive Drawing Machine out of Lego Nxt. We had two weeks before we had to present our robot to the class on the 18th.
My group made our robot draw circles with a whiteboard marker pen on the ground. We called it the Vandal Bot. It went through many reincarnations after its first construction but nothing lethal. we used the base for the basic Tribot in our robot.
First we were going to have the pen out back and have the colour sensor out front pointing at the ground to catch the change in paper colour when we put different coloured pieces of cellophane across the light source, Unfortunately this didn't work so we decided to use darkness and light.
Our robot would sense when it was light and sit there patiently then when it when dark it would go crazy vandalizing, thrus The Vandal Bot. Then we had to give it a reason and a personality. We decided to make it draw circles as its vandal signature, because that was its eye. Its always watching you, waiting till you least expect it to take revenge for being rebuilt and disassembled all the time.
We also gave it a cape.
Thursday - Thursday
So... I've been lazy. Been a while since my last blog during orientation week.
On Thursday we did, what our lecturers called Situational Shuffle. In teams of four we were given small rectangular pieces of paper with instruction and assigned a role, controler (who read out the instructions), actuator (who followed the instructions), Tracker (who tracked our movments) and the sensor (who recorded our actions).
Then we had to write a reflective statement and put together the pictures and video into a presentation of our Situation Shuffle. I did some animation for ours --------->
I also did an animation of numbers rolling past the screen (counting pedestrians) and two cartoonish characters darting round the screen (follow the red lady).
As for my reflective statement - I wasn't that excited about this really, what made it fun was the people in my group and their jokes. I also found all the walking tiring. I believe this activity was to help us get used to teamwork, and to teach us that being in a team meant working to our strengths and giving our role in the group our own special touch. I also believe the presentation afterwards was to help us with visualising our ideas, an important part to our course and hopefully, future career. It showed us that we had to have more planing before we jumped into the action so we knew what we were doing and got what we wanted in the end.
Friday we all presented our presentations. We had a little problem with ours as we wanted to put our movie onto a pdf but needed a lectured to show us how, which meant we were doing it at the last possible moment and that we didn't have sound. Afterwards there was a BBQ and the year 3 pitches which I didn't stay for. But, I got my macbook before I went home.
Monday we started on the Lego Nxt, building robots.
Monday morning we were told to split into groups of four an design a chess piece. My group designed The Atlas. A piece made to annoy both players, able to move three squares in any direction the Atlas is designed to block your opponent. It cannot take out any enemy pieces and starts in the middle of the board. It expands to cover all eight squares surrounding the one it stands on when moved, if the opponents piece is in one those square already it is unable to move while the Atlas resides beside it. When we had designed our chess pieces to the set condition we explained them and pinned the to the walls then had a look at the other groups. Some had some inventive ideas but had confusing explanations. I particularly like the Manic which flipped each turn and had a different set of moves.
We then had to make them out of Lego Nxt and program them to move to their protocol (The moves of each chess piece). Our way of translating our chess piece moves into robot program was to drove forward so far, then spin for ages.
We demonstrated this on Tuesday to the class. Then had races/robot fights. Afterwoods we had a new project. Create a robot in keeping with our chess pieces style and characteristics to come into the room from the foyer and knock on Pats office door/ask her for help.
This was very frustrating as we had ideas but not the expertise to program the robot to do what we wanted. Then when we could program something it didn't turn out how we wanted. In the end we kept our original idea of banging into the door repeatedly for knocking, but ended up using the colour sensor and having the robot turn when it sensed the colour yellow.
On Thursday we did, what our lecturers called Situational Shuffle. In teams of four we were given small rectangular pieces of paper with instruction and assigned a role, controler (who read out the instructions), actuator (who followed the instructions), Tracker (who tracked our movments) and the sensor (who recorded our actions).
Then we had to write a reflective statement and put together the pictures and video into a presentation of our Situation Shuffle. I did some animation for ours --------->
I also did an animation of numbers rolling past the screen (counting pedestrians) and two cartoonish characters darting round the screen (follow the red lady).
As for my reflective statement - I wasn't that excited about this really, what made it fun was the people in my group and their jokes. I also found all the walking tiring. I believe this activity was to help us get used to teamwork, and to teach us that being in a team meant working to our strengths and giving our role in the group our own special touch. I also believe the presentation afterwards was to help us with visualising our ideas, an important part to our course and hopefully, future career. It showed us that we had to have more planing before we jumped into the action so we knew what we were doing and got what we wanted in the end.
Friday we all presented our presentations. We had a little problem with ours as we wanted to put our movie onto a pdf but needed a lectured to show us how, which meant we were doing it at the last possible moment and that we didn't have sound. Afterwards there was a BBQ and the year 3 pitches which I didn't stay for. But, I got my macbook before I went home.
Monday we started on the Lego Nxt, building robots.Monday morning we were told to split into groups of four an design a chess piece. My group designed The Atlas. A piece made to annoy both players, able to move three squares in any direction the Atlas is designed to block your opponent. It cannot take out any enemy pieces and starts in the middle of the board. It expands to cover all eight squares surrounding the one it stands on when moved, if the opponents piece is in one those square already it is unable to move while the Atlas resides beside it. When we had designed our chess pieces to the set condition we explained them and pinned the to the walls then had a look at the other groups. Some had some inventive ideas but had confusing explanations. I particularly like the Manic which flipped each turn and had a different set of moves.
We then had to make them out of Lego Nxt and program them to move to their protocol (The moves of each chess piece). Our way of translating our chess piece moves into robot program was to drove forward so far, then spin for ages.
We demonstrated this on Tuesday to the class. Then had races/robot fights. Afterwoods we had a new project. Create a robot in keeping with our chess pieces style and characteristics to come into the room from the foyer and knock on Pats office door/ask her for help.
This was very frustrating as we had ideas but not the expertise to program the robot to do what we wanted. Then when we could program something it didn't turn out how we wanted. In the end we kept our original idea of banging into the door repeatedly for knocking, but ended up using the colour sensor and having the robot turn when it sensed the colour yellow.
The robots were then put into action this morning, Thursday. Then we got a new project. To make an interactive drawing machine.
Social Mapping
So...
On Tuesday we did social mapping. We were spit into 4 groups of 10-11 people then given a fake wall. We were asked a bunch of questions and wrote the answers on post it notes which we stuck on a wall around another post it with our name. 
Then we stuck pins in the post its and stung yarn around them. This, I believe was to make it easy to tell which answers belonged to who but made it impossible to read the names on the middle post its.
Then we strung yarn between all the same answers. we had to name each line and write it down
When we came back we were introduced to gephi, and told how to input the dater from the map above to make a graph. Unfortunately I didn't edit my graph in the preview mode and it printed completely different.
Then we stuck pins in the post its and stung yarn around them. This, I believe was to make it easy to tell which answers belonged to who but made it impossible to read the names on the middle post its.
Then we strung yarn between all the same answers. we had to name each line and write it downThen we had a brake for lunch.
When we came back we were introduced to gephi, and told how to input the dater from the map above to make a graph. Unfortunately I didn't edit my graph in the preview mode and it printed completely different.The next day everyone brought in there gephi graphs, we picked the best one in our group and developed it.
We also had an introduction of the 3D labs.
Introduction
Hello
Well, this is my Creative Technologies blog, my digital protfolio. All about the projects I do for my CT course at AUT.
First day today, only 2 hrs of the programme leader James Charlton explaining about the course, how its marked, our timetable, yada yada. This is my homework. Start a blog to document the progress of my projects.
As such I don't really have much to blog about.
So, till next time
Darquess
Well, this is my Creative Technologies blog, my digital protfolio. All about the projects I do for my CT course at AUT.
First day today, only 2 hrs of the programme leader James Charlton explaining about the course, how its marked, our timetable, yada yada. This is my homework. Start a blog to document the progress of my projects.
As such I don't really have much to blog about.
So, till next time
Darquess
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